Innovative and Encouraging Research and Application of Co-teaching in Rural Settings: An Introduction to Volume 9, Issue 2 of TPRE

Ninety-seven percent of the United States’ land mass is considered rural and close to 20 percent of the country’s population live in rural spaces (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017). These areas face such challenges as higher poverty coupled with lower budgetary revenue, lower levels of educational attainment, and critical problems in staffing schools (Fishman, 2015; Grooms, 2016; Showalter, Klein, Johnson, & Hartman, 2017). Although these issues are similar to urban areas, rural districts have considerable variability and specific needs that differ from their counterparts in urban settings (Johnson & Zoellner, 2016). Unfortunately, rural schools are often treated by federal and state policy makers like urban schools, with a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing the problems rather than from a strengthand challenges-based perspective (Fishman, 2015; Johnson & Howley, 2015).